Monster War (12 page)

With trembling arms, Director Drake raised the heavy sledgehammer above the fragile marble statue that Charlie Benjamin had become.

“Stop this!” William said, pushing through the crowd. “This wasn’t part of our agreement! This is murder and I won’t allow it to happen!”

Several men in the crowd grabbed William and began to drag him away.

“What are you doing?” William yelled, fighting back. “Let me go!”

More people piled on and soon they dragged the General down the hallway and out of sight. After all, the Director was only doing what
had
to be done, wasn’t he? Yes, it was extreme, but extreme times called for extreme measures, didn’t they?

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Director Drake said, still holding the sledgehammer aloft. “Justice is served.” He swung at Charlie.

Just before the sledgehammer made contact, a portal opened in the floor directly beneath Drake and - with a startled shout - he fell into the Nether.

There was a collective gasp as the assembled Nethermancers and Banishers looked around to see who would do such a terrible thing. Finally, their eyes rested on someone who had been all but forgotten in the insane events of the last hour.

Brooke Brighton, still horribly transformed by her sacrifice, stood in the midst of the mob with purple fire crackling across her body. With a wave of her hand, she closed the portal that she had just opened.

“Where did you put him?” a Banisher demanded.

“Somewhere -
crooooak!
- safe. You’re lucky too, because if I had any sense at all, I would have dropped that fiend into the 5th Ring.”

“Grab her!” someone else shouted. “This is treason!”

The crowd began to advance on Brooke, yelling angrily, when a familiar voice suddenly cut through the din.

“Leave her alone.”

It was Charlie Benjamin.

W
ith one final swipe of Violet’s axe, the last of the Gorgons in the Gorgon Maze fell dead. The snakes protruding from its scalp rattled and then went still as it dropped on top of a heap of slain monsters. It was only then, in the perfect silence of the maze, that Violet realised how loud the hissing of the snakes had been when the Gorgons were alive. She opened her eyes and was astonished by the incredible mound of them that lay in front of her, corpses cooling.

“Wow. Not bad,” she said, impressed with her own handiwork.

Suddenly, Sir Thomas Wainwright sprang back to life, the hard marble of his skin turning soft and pliable once again.

“Victory!” he roared, still gripping his mace. “Turn
you to stone, do they? Preposterous! I’m as soft-skinned as the day I was born!” He looked over at Violet. “And I believe you vanquished two of the foul beasties as well, young lady. Good show! A welcome respite from playing with your dollies, I expect!”

“Yeah, right,” Violet replied. “Dollies.”

“Can I open my eyes now?” Theodore asked, hands on his hips. “I feel like they’re going to get stuck like this if I don’t do it soon.”

Violet nodded. “Go ahead. All the Gorgons are dead.”

Theodore blinked his eyes open. It took them a couple of seconds to adjust to the intense coloured light of the crystal walls.

“Have a look, lad!” Sir Thomas bellowed, kicking at the mound of dead Gorgons in front of him. “Quite a feat, eh? I slayed so many of the hideous monstrosities, I lost track.”

Theodore laughed. “Then you must be really stupid because you slayed exactly ‘none’.
El Numero Nada
. The big fat zero.”

Sir Thomas’s brow darkened. “And how would you know? You had your eyes closed through the entire battle like some kind of ridiculous girlie-child!”

“Yeah, and you were a statue the whole time. Violet did all the fighting, you medieval glory-hogger.”

“Outrageous! I should whip you for your impudence!”

“Oh, knock it off,” Violet said to Sir Thomas. “Besides, it’s hard to take you seriously when you’re wearing a dress.”

“A dress? Young miss, this is a nightshirt and it is quite suitable for sleeping, I’ll have you know! Besides, there was no time to change - I awoke to discover a large opening of fiery purple flame in my quarters and, being a noble defender of His Majesty, I immediately grabbed my trusty mace and walked through to investigate. A moment later,
you
showed up.”

“A
moment
later?” Theodore repeated with a laugh. “More like five hundred
years
later.”

“Preposterous! Child, you are silly in the head.”

Violet sighed. “Look, Sir Thomas, here’s what happened. You had a nightmare and you mistakenly opened a portal to the Gorgon Maze in the Nether - which is where we are right now - and then you got turned to stone by a Gorgon and you’ve been stuck here for five centuries.”

“Exactly!” Theodore added. “So deal with it!”

“You impudent Gryphon turd!”

Sir Thomas ran after Theodore, who easily dodged the slower man by playing hide-and-seek around the heaped, steaming pile of Gorgon heads. He darted around a
corner, nearly slamming into a woman and a man walking towards him.

“Whoa, slow down,” the woman said. She wore the outfit of a Banisher from the Nightmare Division, but it seemed horribly out of date. “It appears that everyone in the maze has come back to life. Are you the one that killed all the Gorgons?”

Theodore shook his head. “Nope, not me - although if I had a weapon of some kind, I definitely
could
have. I’m good that way.”

“
I
am the monster slayer you seek,” Sir Thomas roared, wheezing desperately as he trotted up to the boy, his face a bright, unhealthy red. “Hold him, please. I want to hit him in the head.”

“Oh, knock it off before you have a heart attack,” Theodore replied. “And I already told you - you didn’t kill the Gorgons,
Violet
did.” He pointed to his friend, who was wiping her axe blade clean on the side of one of the dead beasts.

“Do you mean to claim,” the woman said, “that the young girl over there killed every single monster in the maze? If true, that’s quite something.”

“Yes, she is,” Theodore replied with grin.

Suddenly, a screech echoed through the crystal corridors, followed by a horrible cackle. “Murderers!” a
voice shouted. “Assassins! Violators! Who dared to kill my beautiful Gorgons?”

Violet knew instantly who the voice belonged to. “The Hag Queen. You’d all better portal out before she gets here.”

The woman nodded. “Excellent idea.” She turned to the man beside her. “Open one up, Henry. Quickly.”

Henry extended his right hand and opened a small portal back to Earth. As he and the woman leaped through, Theodore wondered how long they had been trapped in the maze. Present-day Earth might seem as strange to them as the Nether—it surely would be for Sir Thomas.

The woman turned back to Violet. “Aren’t you three coming?”

Violet shook her head. “Thanks, but we have business with the Hag Queen.”

“You’re crazy,” Henry said, laughing. “She’s a boss of the Nether! If you stay, she’ll kill you surely.”

“Nonsense!” Sir Thomas roared. “I will slay her utterly! She will soon taste the steel of my war mace!”

Theodore rolled his eyes. “Look, seriously. We really don’t need you here - you or your big mace. So why don’t you just take off?”

“Nay! If there is blood to be spilt, I will spill it!”

And that was when the Hag Queen swooped down
next to Theodore on her strong, leathery wings. “You again! I invited you to come and stay with me, child - not to kill all my lovely Gorgons…”

“Ha!” Sir Thomas shouted. “It was not the boy!
I
killed them, witch - just as I will now kill you!”

Theodore groaned. “Oh, will you please shut up? I told you twenty times - you had
nothing
to do with killing the Gorgons!”

“So then it
was
you, child,” the Hag cackled. “This time, memories are not the only thing I will take from you…”

“Last chance,” Henry said from the other side of the portal. “Come on - jump through. You’ll be safe here.”

Violet waved them off. “Go on. We’ll be fine.”

“Suit yourself.”

Henry closed the portal, locking the rest of them in the Gorgon Maze with the Hag Queen. Violet turned to her. “I’m sorry about your Gorgons, but I have something very important to talk to you about. It’s about my friend Theodore.”

The monster glared back and there was no kindness or pity in her eyes. “I really don’t care,” she said, and then attacked.

Charlie Benjamin leaped out of the Reduction Room and into the hallway beyond as the crowd of Banishers and Nethermancers closed in on Brooke.

“Stay away from her,” he said, brandishing the Sword of Sacrifice in front of him.

“Or what?” replied a Nethermancer with bright red hair - Charlie vaguely remembered that the Headmaster had once referred to him as Coogan. “You’ll take a swing at us with your shiny new sword?”

“If I have to.”

He stepped in front of Brooke, shielding her from the approaching crowd.

“Be careful,” Coogan sneered. “If you touch her, you might catch what she’s got and I don’t think green is your colour.” Everyone laughed.

“Why are you doing this?” Charlie asked, truly mystified. “There are monsters and Golems out there - horrible things - tearing our world apart. And look at you - instead of protecting people, you’re in here, trying to hurt us. We’re not the enemy.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” a gruff Banisher said, his bald head shining slickly with sweat. “You got us into this miserable situation, Benjamin - you and your friends. And before justice could be dispensed, the frog - I mean the
girl
- dumped the Director into the Nether to save your sorry hide.”

Charlie turned to Brooke. “You did that for me?”

She shrugged. “Someone had to. He was about to hit you with a sledgehammer. Since you were still a statue at the time, it seemed, well - unsporting.”

“It was
necessary
,” the bald Banisher said, “to make sure you couldn’t do anything else to put this Division - and this world - in further danger. Now you can either come with us the easy way…or the hard.”

Charlie sighed dramatically. “Why does everyone always give us that choice? Hey, Brooke - have we
ever
taken the easy way?”

She shook her head. “Nope. We’ve pretty much always been ‘hard way’ types.”

They shared a smile then - warm and genuine - and, for just a moment, Brooke completely forgot what had happened to her, what she looked like now.

“Oh, my God, Brooke, is that
you
?” a voice cried out.

She turned to see Geoff at the rear of the crowd, dressed in his clean, new Facilitator’s uniform. The handsome boy’s eyes went wide with astonishment and he laughed shrilly.

“Ugh - it
is
you! You’re disgusting! I told you not to go off with your bozo friends and now just
look
at you!” He jokingly elbowed a Banisher beside him. “Can you believe I actually kissed that thing?” Then he stuck his
finger down his throat and made a gagging sound.

Charlie glanced at Brooke. “You want to handle this?”

“Love to.”

Purple fire crackled across her and, moments later, she snapped open a large portal into the ocean of the 4
^th
Ring. Cold, fetid water rushed through in a geyser, blasting the crowd backwards.

Yes!
Charlie thought as he and Brooke were swept away along with the others.
A wetwash! Way to go!

The raging water raced through the many hallways of the Nightmare Division, threatening to swamp the whole facility in a rising flood.

“Wow, that was some portal!” Charlie shouted as they careened past door after door like passengers on a lunatic flume ride. “All the way to the 4
^th
Ring!”

Brooke nodded. “Yeah! For some reason, Nethermancy has got a whole lot easier since…well, since I started looking like this.” She gestured to her misshapen face.

“Maybe that’s because you stopped worrying about looking pretty all the time and started thinking about what’s important.”

“You mean like blasting Geoff in the face with freezing ocean water?”

Charlie nodded gleefully. “Did you see his expression? Priceless!”

“Well, he had it coming - they
all
did.”

And that was when they saw the fin.

It sliced towards them through the water with astonishing speed. As it neared, the creature it belonged to lifted its black head above the surface, revealing row after row of razor-sharp teeth. Its eyes were silvery slits that reflected everything around them like mirrors.

“It’s a Shredder-Shark!” Brooke shouted. “I must have opened the portal near a school of them!”

“A
school
? Wait a minute - you mean they come in packs?”

Brooke nodded. “If there’s one in here - there’s probably twenty.”

Those silvery eyes widened as the creature approached and Charlie could see himself reflected in them, grotesquely stretched and wavy, as if he’d looked into a trick mirror. Suddenly, the Shredder-Shark’s lower jaw unhinged and dropped further than Charlie had imagined possible, creating a deadly maw ringed with those terrible teeth. It began to scoop up everything in its path.

“Swim!” Charlie shouted. “As fast as you can and don’t look back!”

But it was too late.

The Shredder-Shark was on top of them and those
razor teeth seemed to fill the world. As the raging water carried Charlie and Brooke into the large, circular hub of the Nightmare Division, he raised his sword and chopped off the monster’s snout. It began to bleed profusely into the dark ocean water.

“Uh-oh,” Brooke said.

“What? Did you see my sword strike? It was awesome!”

“There’s blood in the water!”

“So?”

“So haven’t you ever heard of a ‘feeding frenzy’?”

And that was when several huge Shredder-Sharks raced into the massive hub of the Division and attacked the Shark that Charlie had wounded. The ocean around them churned violently as the massive beasts flipped and lunged while devouring their crippled prey.

“What are we going to do?” Brooke screamed as one of the giant beasts crashed down next to her, its silvery eyes glinting menacingly, white teeth flashing.

“Close the first portal and open another!” Charlie shouted back as he speared a Shredder-Shark through the head with his glowing sword. “Do it now!”

“OK! Where to?”

“I don’t know! To Theodore and Violet, wherever they are!”

As Charlie swung his sword, lopping off the tail of another Shredder-Shark, Brooke closed her first portal. The blast of ocean water stopped flowing as if turned off by a tap. Then, with another wave of her hand, she opened up a new portal…

…into the Gorgon Maze.